Open Doors, Open Windows.

At the age of nineteen I accepted the fact that I would never be an astronaut; that I'd never never dance with the Bolshoi. Pretty much everything else was fertile ground for exploration and at some point I'd cover it all.

At this stage, I've accepted that I'll never be a fireman. I'll never look into one of my children's eyes and see his great grandmother. I'll never be President of the United States. I'm resigned to those facts and don't really feel like I've given up anything. Up until today, I feel like I've kept as many doors open as is humanly possible. At nineteen, I thought anything was possible. I now feel like anything that could be important to me is possible.

But the difference between being nineteen and today is that I'm beginning to feel like I'm going to step through one of these doors I've been keeping open and as a result some windows are going to close. For the first time in my life, I'm beginning to understand what true regret must feel like.

Understand that the choices I'm facing are not earth shattering. In fact, in the grand scheme of things the choices I face are pretty trivial. They could best be summed up by a horoscope I recently read. It said that I was faced with the choice of comfort and security, but boredom; or autonomy and freedom, but loneliness. I've been trying to travel both paths for the last couple of years. For me, they've been parallel paths and the gulf between the two has been pretty easily jumped. But I'm beginning to feel the paths really diverge.

I guess that's what they mean by growing up. By the time most people have reached my stage of life they've made several life-determining commitments. They've married. They've had children. They've made financial commitments that prevent them from doing radical things. There are mortgages and orthodontist bills.

But as I type this, I find myself wondering if those things really are life-determining decisions. Houses can be sold. Teeth are eventually straightened. Degrees can be earned, skills attained. But all of those things take time and jumping paths virtually assures that none of the paths will be distinguished. Unless you're exceptionally talented and lucky.

And that is where I diverge from most people. At my core I feel exceptionally talented and lucky. I feel like I've been blessed with a wealth of resources and that it's my responsibility to use as many of them as possible. And that's what I think I've done.

If you haven't guessed, today is a big day. There's an opportunity in front of me and I've been struggling with the question of just how aggressively I pursue it. I've reached the decision that I pursue it just as aggressively as if it was the only opportunity in front of me and that I wanted it as much as I've ever wanted anything. I'll put decisions off a little later. Right now there really isn't anything to decide.

When a door opens, a window doesn't necessarily close, it's just that stepping through the door makes the window further away.